The success of the Web and email may be due to their scalability and interoperability. In part, such scalability and interoperability are enabled by standardized message formats, protocols, and addressing schemes. The Web in particular takes advantage of URI (universal resource identifier) addressing to find endpoints. Traditionally, endpoints were software components supporting remote procedure calls. However, a new model for network-based computing uses a representational state transfer (REST) paradigm. In the REST paradigm, sources of specific information are called resources and are identified, typically, by a URI. A connector can mediate the requests made for resources. Servers, caches, tunnels, etc., are all examples of connectors. Each may make or forward a request without explicit knowledge of where the actual resource may be.
Resources may be owned by one entity, hosted by another entity, and support connectors may be from virtually anywhere. Varying requirements for security resulting from this variety may prevent transparent operation of such a mesh of resources, because different participants may have different requirements for security. In addition, not all participants may support the same security processes and protocols.
For example, one resource owner may require public key authentication and support only elliptic curve key types. However, a requester attempting to use that resource may support only RSA key types. Further, the requester may have to traverse a network that requires an SSL2 secure communication protocol for transport sercurity while another path may not.